The
aural, visual and situational elements combine with the unpredictable
interaction between manifold performers and auditors to throw up a theatre on
the spot – transcending the old form of theatre because what is happening is
really happening!

In the
light of Jerusalemic mythology, catalysts like Ferlinghetti, heralds like Corso
and a high-priest like Ginsberg were indeed called for to revive Albion today.
England had need of Miltonics – strong confident voices, to purge the
atmosphere of slick or ambiguous non-sounds. She seemed the veritable ‘fen of
stagnant waters’ – her obtaining philosophies sunk in ‘irritable reaching after
fact and reason’ – controlled by logical and linguistic analysis; her arts in
the anxious vicelike grip of surface naturalism, & posey tied down by
abstract law, the type of Urizen (‘Your Reason + the Greek ‘limiting power’) –
unregenerate commonsensical enemies of light. Her literary giants mere Goliaths
of advertising, her brightest sparks in the deathly stupor of materialism.

---(Horovitz, ‘Afterwords’, p. 344.).

7.

[…] He
(Fainlight) dedicated his ‘Larksong’ specifically to English poets – to rouse
up whole galaxies of song – the poem a machine to outlive the most insolent
raids on inner and outer space.

8.

The
effect of culture has never been so direct and widespread as it is amongst the
international class of disaffiliated young people, the provotariat.
Consequently, art itself has seldom been closer to its violent and orgiastic
roots. What has happened is that the pressure of restriction preceding nuclear
suicide has precipitated a biological reflex compelling the leftist element in
the young middle class for the reaffirmation of life by orgy and violence. What
is happening is an evolutionary convulsion rather than a reformation. Young
people are not correcting society. They are regurgitating it.

---(Jeff
Nuttall, Bomb Culture, 1968, p. 9.).

9.

Professor
Leavis said:

…Poetry
matters because of the kind of poet who is more alive than most people, most
alive in his own age. He is, as it were, the most conscious point of the race
in his time.

---(Horovitz, ‘Afterwords’, p.373).

Bibliography

Horovitz,
Michael (ed.), Children of Albion: Poetry
of the ‘Underground’ in Britain (Penguin, 1969).

Horovitz,
Wordsounds and Sightlines: New and
Selected Poems (New Departures,1994).

2012/10/18

In August 1964 Alexander Trocchi,
author and self-styled ‘cosmonaut of inner space’ attempted to submit an
unusual document to the London Underground Transport Authority.[i]
Entitled The Moving Times, the document in question was a large
broadsheet poster featuring text by Jeff Nuttall, William Burroughs, Kenneth
White, Robert Creeley, Trocchi himself and an extract from Antonin Artaud.[ii]
The poster was designed to mimic the style of a newspaper and as Trocchi had
explained two years earlier, the idea was to ‘rent an advertisement panel in
(say) four of the London Underground stations for a trail period of one year’
in order to display the poster alongside existing advertising material.[iii]
Concurrent with this proposal, a large-scale guerrilla distribution campaign
was also outlined which aimed to distribute copies of the poster in bars and
coffee shops throughout London.[iv]

The publication of The Moving
Times was part of what Trocchi called Project Sigma. Initiated in 1962,
this was the focus of much of Trocchi’s work until 1977 and operated as ‘a
tactical experiment in metacategorical interaction’, an attempt to establish an
international network of countercultural activism.[v]
The targets of this envisaged cultural revolt were the media, universities and
workplaces: socially based institutions and structures perceived as limiting
the free expression of the individual as a consequence of their control over
existing channels of communication. Sigma’s intended ‘coup de monde’ would
emerge not from a frontal attack but from a subversive ‘outflanking’ of these
identified centres of power. Existing social networks would be manipulated
rather than rejected in order to highlight conceptual loopholes, exposing to
the individuals involved in Sigma how for example, ‘the conventional media
contain the seeds of their own ineffectuality’.[vi]
To facilitate this movement of revolt, Trocchi regarded as vital the
maintenance of ‘effective communications’ between project participants.[vii]
A key aspect of Sigma was an emphasis on self-publishing, hence, The Moving
Times. For Trocchi, this activity was a means of ‘seizing the grids’ of
cultural expression through a removal of the mediating presence of censors,
editors and ‘the traditional trap of publishing house policy’.[viii]
The texts Trocchi produced under the banner of Sigma were circulated to the
individuals involved in the project on a subscription basis.[ix]The
Moving Times was included in this postal distribution, alongside other
important essays such as ‘The Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds’ and
‘Sigma: A Tactical Blueprint’. An interactive network was established through
the extension of an invitation to recipients to make their own contributions in
response to this material. The resulting and projected ‘multi-focal,
heterogeneous ‘interpersonal logbook’’ was referred to as The Sigma Portfolio.[x] Amongst the critics who have
investigated Trocchi’s work, Project Sigma has been acknowledged as either a
heroic attempt which failed due to an inability to realise its grand plans, or
as John Calder has argued a largely hyperbolic and ill-thought-out diversion
which allowed Trocchi to avoid writing a sequel to Cain’s Book.[xi]
Each of these assessments is based on the argument that whilst the project
promised much, it produced little; it remained as Mick Farren notes a continual
‘pipedream’.[xii] In
contrast to these perspectives, a defence and re-assessment of Project Sigma
could be developed based specifically around an analysis of the content and
function of the Sigma Portfolio, that which Gavin Bowd has called the project’s
‘one concrete achievement’.[xiii] In brief, one could argue that the reading of Project Sigma as
producing no ‘results’ highlights a misinterpretation of the project itself and
also disregards the integral role of the textual portfolio in the
creation of a countercultural network. Whilst critics such as Jim Backhaus have
defended Project Sigma on the basis of its influence on subsequent
countercultural movements such as The Luther Blisset Project, it is possible to
perceive the portfolio as manifesting in itself many of Sigma’s intended aims.[xiv]
As a collection of documents including The Moving Times, the portfolio
does not function merely as a printed ‘manifesto’ nor a newsletter informing
the reader of acts yet to occur or taking place elsewhere but instead exists as
a direct performance of Trocchi’s concepts.[xv]

In addition, the manner in which Trocchi attempted to disseminate The
Moving Times on the London Underground can also be seen as indicative of
how Sigma regarded and positioned itself as an ‘underground’ movement in
relation to ‘mainstream’ society.

ii

Project Sigma grew out of Trocchi’s involvement with the
Situationist International. He met Guy Debord in 1955 in Paris whilst editing
the literary journal Merlin and Debord acknowledged Trocchi as a
founding and active member of the group.[xvi]
The ‘Invisible Insurrection’ essay appeared in International Situationiste
Review number 8, in January 1963. However, Debord expelled Trocchi soon
after on account of the proposed inclusivity of Sigma and his association with
individuals such as Allen Ginsberg and Colin Wilson who as Greil Marcus notes,
Debord regarded with disdain.[xvii]
Despite this division, the influence of the situationists pervades the texts of
the Sigma Portfolio. Trocchi includes a piece entitled ‘Manifesto
Situationiste: project sigma edition’ a translation of a Debord text.[xviii]
‘Potlatch’, the name given to the Letterist Internationale periodical is also
used as the title of a document outlining the model of distribution and
response intended for the portfolio. In addition, within ‘Sigma: A Tactical
Blueprint’, Trocchi elaborates upon his notion of the ‘spontaneous university’
or Sigma Centre.[xix]
Regarding established educational institutions such as Cambridge as ‘hopelessly geared and
sprocketted to the cultural-economic axles of the status quo’, the spontaneous
university was presented as an alternative operating ‘unofficially at a
supranational level’.[xx]
This ‘experimental laboratory’ was to have been located on the outskirts of
London in order to be within ‘striking distance of the capital’ and to exist
also as a ‘shadow reality’ to Oxbridge.[xxi]
Its main role was to act as a

‘Community
as art…exploring the possible functions of a society in which leisure is the dominant fact…in which the
conventional assumptions about reality and the constraints
they imply are no longer operative’.[xxii]

Additionally, whilst a physical building was sought
to house the university, Trocchi proposed a custom made structure designed ‘for
and around the participants’, thereby moving away from his perception of much
institutional architecture as a ‘that which reinforces conventional functions,
conventional attitudes’.[xxiii]
Trocchi’s desire to establish this ‘leisuredome’ and explicit awareness of the
psychological influence of physical constructions sees him keying into
important situationist concepts. As both Bowd and Backhouse have noted we see
distinct reflections of the ‘ludic topography’ central to Constant’s New
Babylon and the ‘unitary urbanism’, explored by Debord through the concepts of
Derive and Psychogeography, the ‘study of the specific effects of the
geographical environment, consciously organised or not on the emotions and
behaviour of the individual’.[xxiv]

This particular line of
influence, however, emphasising the architectural and spatial ambitions of the
project also provides the main grounds for criticism of Sigma. In an account
which has come to dominate many considerations of Sigma’s legacy, Nuttall
writing in Bomb Culture states that the closest Trocchi came to
instigating his ‘cultural jam session’ was an enormously chaotic weekend
conference at Braziers Park, a Quaker retreat near Oxford, in 1964.[xxv]
In addition, the nearest relative to the proposed Sigma centre, Joseph Berke’s
Anti-University, established in London in 1968 at which Trocchi lectured on
Sigma was similarly short-lived.[xxvi]
In response, it is worth noting Trocchi’s expressed internationalism in
relation to the Sigma Centre; his intention to situate multiple centres ‘near
the capitals of many countries’.[xxvii]
Whilst Trocchi did not gain worldwide coverage, neither Nuttall, Battista nor
Paul A. Green acknowledge the achievements of the Dutch poet Simon Vikenoog. In
1966, acting as Sigma’s ‘Lieutenant’ Vikenoog gained funding from Amsterdam’s
Department of Art Affairs in order to open the Sigma Centrum based specifically
on Trocchi’s model.[xxviii]

In addition to this, looking form
a more theoretical perspective, although Trocchi does place emphasis on the
need for a physical base for the spontaneous university, it is intended to
function only as a ‘fountainhead’, used to store ‘tools and dream machines’,
printing presses and duplication equipment.[xxix]
On the evidence of Trocchi’s essay the university itself is envisaged more as a
‘conflux of creative ideas’ than as an actual building.[xxx]
It is conceived as:

‘An
experimental situation in which the personnel itself is to be regarded as an artefact, a continuous making, a
creative process, a community enacting itself in its individual members’.[xxxi]

The spontaneous university is
thus ‘spontaneous’ precisely because it emerges as and when the individual
participants intersect. As Trocchi states in the portfolio entry ‘Project
Sigma: Cultural Engineering’: ‘Sigma does not exist except for those who are in
it’.[xxxii]
In relation to this, Trocchi does not see his role in the project as that of a
tutor, mentor or guru, but instead identifies himself as a ‘pamphleteer’
charged with instigating the necessary ‘meeting of minds’.[xxxiii]
The primacy here given to the pamphlet, the text, in the establishment of a
network suggests that for sigma, the goal of an ‘international conference’ does
not emerge solely from the construction of an institution housed in a specific
place but rather as a result and in the very act of document exchange between
individuals.[xxxiv] From
this perspective then, in an echo of how the authors of the Arts Action
Academia manifesto conceptualise underground publications, the collected texts
of Trocchi’s portfolio supersede the physical university becoming in themselves
‘a meeting and rallying point, a space for cultural events’.[xxxv]

The operation of this interaction
can be observed amongst the collated texts. Trocchi began the Portfolio with a
letter, dated July 1964, which was sent to a variety of artists, writers and
intellectuals ranging from Anthony Burgess to Timothy Leary. The letter
outlined the project and ‘hoped to inspire contributions’.[xxxvi]
A month later Trocchi received an essay entitled ‘Psychotherapy: The Present
Situation’ from the ‘anti-psychiatrist’, R.D. Laing.[xxxvii]
Arguing for the necessity of ‘an authentic meeting with patients’, Laing states
that to be effective, psychotherapy must involve the ‘pairing down of all that
stands between individuals’, patient and therapist, ‘all the props, the masks,
the roles, the lies, the defences’. The practice must become aware of the
organic relationship between individuals, the fact that ‘the behaviour of one
person is a function of the behaviour of the other’.[xxxviii]
Around the same time, Trocchi also received a submission from the San Francisco –based poet
Michael McClure. This was an extract from his 1963 book Meat Science Essays,
entitled ‘Revolt’.[xxxix]
Although obviously working from a different context and with different
motivations, McClure’s essay with its valorisation of organicism and a
conceptualisation of revolt as a ‘mammal howl’, a cellular action, establishes
significant links with Laing’s piece.[xl]
Both essentially encourage a realisation of that which is natural, instinctual
and perhaps even animalistic in the individual. They each evoke what has been
termed the ‘new consciousness’; a movement back to an original, primal
consciousness which Robert Bond has identified in much countercultural writing.[xli]
This is the type of thematic link which Trocchi hoped would be would be
recognised by anybody who read the assembled documents. However, in addition to
the presentation of parallel works, the mechanism of the portfolio was such
that ‘every nuclear participant would be provided with the entire file’.[xlii]
Subsequently, through this system of duplication and distribution functioning
almost as a type of immediate feedback, Laing would receive a copy of McClure’s
work and vice versa. The Portfolio thereby establishes ‘the construction of
situations’ as interpreted by Howard Slater as it works at this level to
‘create new social relations…in order to explore other means of expression’,
expression here meaning ‘undisciplined creativity’.[xliii]
The creativity highlighted can be considered ‘undisciplined’ as the portfolio
shows similar lines of thought developing and overlapping between different
epistemological fields. In the case of Laing and McClure, we see that
psychiatry and poetry, the creative groups which were unable to gel when
assembled at the Nuttall described conference, appear to merge seamlessly when
positioned within the portfolio’s textual zone. As Trocchi notes, the portfolio
creates a community as it offers ‘support’, as individuals’ working in
disparate disciplines are provided with ‘conscious recognition that they are
not alone.’[xliv]

To advance this reading further
it is worth pausing to consider another of Trocchi’s stated recipients. We are
told in the ‘List of Interested Persons’ that Trocchi had sent the Sigma
material to Wallace Berman.[xlv] Berman
was an extremely influential yet relatively unknown artist who was active in
Los Angles and San Francisco
from the mid fifties until around 1970. Trocchi knew and worked with Berman
during stay in the Venice
Beach from August 1958 to
April 1959.[xlvi] Berman
worked in a variety of media creating assemblages from found materials, but
like Trocchi he was also a tireless networker. From 1955 onwards he produced
the assemblage magazine Semina which ran for 9 issues. According to
Rebecca Solnit each edition usually comprised of ‘a small folder or envelope
containing poems, photographs, calligraphy and artwork’ which brought together
diverse elements in compound ways that would bear fruit’.[xlvii]
Audiences receiving the small collections were invited to ‘find affinities and
discover a continuing tradition’.[xlviii]
Alongside Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondence School, also instigated in
1955, Semina has been seen as a precursor to what has become known as
the mail art movement.[xlix]
This practice which involves artists circulating their work to each other via
the postal system in a so-called ‘eternal network’, aims to as Guy Blues
states, ‘democratise, decentralise and dematerialise artistic production’.[l] In
theory, mail art suggests that anybody from anywhere can participate regardless
of their level of skill or expertise. For Berman there is an added level of
significance in that the transportation of the artefact through the postal
system equates to a metaphysical art. The piece is transformed and carries the
mark of this transformation through the acquisition of stamps, postmarks and
the sense that it has passed through several hands, ‘absorbing energies’.[li] For Robert Duncan, this aspect of Semina
identified it as a ‘cult’ magazine in the sense that in its dissemination it ‘cultivated’
something. Semina was not necessarily ‘concerned with good writing’ he
explains, but with defining ‘some new life way…a new way of feeling’.[lii]

In order to explain the specifics
of this ‘new life way’ we must return to the Letterist document I mentioned
earlier, Potlatch, which in turn, due to Trocchi’s usage leads us back
into the orbit of Sigma. For Georges Bataille ‘potlatch’ signified a ‘gift
economy’. Taking his cue from Marcel Mauss, Bataille describes ‘an archaic,
ritualised and festival-based form of exchange which excludes all bargaining’.[liii]
The gift of riches is given with the intention to humiliate a rival. This
humiliation can only be effaced by the donee through the return of a more
valuable gift, a return with interest.[liv]
Potlatch for Bataille then signifies a continual process of expenditure. This
frequently self-destructive activity exists at odds with so-called
‘conventional’ systems of exchange in which ‘all individual effort in order to
be valid must be reducible to the fundamental necessities of production and
conservation’.[lv]
Berman’s Semina aligns with Bataille’s schema in that the unique and
hand-made quality of each issue spoke directly to the reader of its labour
intensive creation. However, at the same time each Semina was fragile
and ephemeral. They were not designed to be preserved or archived. Semina could
also not be bought, it was a gift which in many ways was worthless, therefore
the only way to ‘repay’ Berman was through the offer of a similar gift or
artefact intended as a contribution to a future issue.[lvi]
In its adoption by the Letterist Internatinale, Potlatch was reinterpreted with
an emphasis placed on the production and circulation of a discourse rather than
an artefact. The group conceptualised their publication as an ‘offering of
non-saleable goods, previously unpublished desires and questions’.[lvii]
In the same way that Berman’s work encouraged the creation of an object similar
to that offered, the Letterist stated that ‘only a through analysis’ of their
presented material could constitute a return gift.[lviii]
In each case then the recipient is motivated to a response. Although each of
the models outlined do not match the destructive excesses described by Bataille
both function to disturb the position of the recipient as passive consumer of
another’s work either in the form of goods or information

In the case of the Sigma
Portfolio, Trocchi’s usage of the concept acts as an amalgamation of these two
models. As with the Letterist magazine, in order to respond one must directly
participate. All responses whether essays, reports or letters are identified as
contributions which are taken up, whirlwind like into the developing network.
This progressive accumulation designates that in theory there is no possibility
of any one-piece officering a full definition of the project, but instead, like
the continual expenditure of the potlatch, the portfolio is subject to a
continual process of ‘becoming.’[lix]
Subsequently, in a mirroring of Semina’s resistance to conservation, the
portfolio cannot be merely filed and stored but as highlighted, it exists
through circulation, by remaining an active discursive space. Similarly,
although pieces such as ‘a tactical blueprint’ are suggestive of a degree of
utility, we see that as with Semina, the main aim is to promote an
‘interplay of action and reaction’.[lx]
As Trocchi suggested in a private letter, the documents which make up the
portfolio do not necessarily work to ‘explain’ ideas to the reader but instead
function to ‘implane’ and ‘implicate’ them in to the project.[lxi]
As the portfolio ‘implanes’, ‘unfolds’ in the sense of both opening in the
hands of the reader and growing as a result of response, the recipient is
implicated, ‘interwoven’ into it.[lxii]

This emphasis on communication as
‘engagement’ and ‘participation’ provides an angle from which to perceive the
practical subversion carried out by the portfolio. From Trocchi’s perspective,
the established networks of communication which dominate Western society are
organised as a series of hierarchical binaries.[lxiii]
Information is conveyed via the maintenance of pyramidical relationships such
as those existing between tutor and students, performer and audience, sender
and recipients. The mechanism of the portfolio works to confuse these polar
distinctions as the Sigma contributors simultaneously occupy each of the
diametrically opposed positions. Each participant in the portfolio acts as a
tutor to and student of all the other individuals involved. In addition to the
promotion of this interaction,the creation of an alternative model of
communication also produces a degree of contrast. Although heavily reliant upon
the postal service to facilitate its distribution, the open field network which
the portfolio creates serves to, as Trocchi states, ‘raise the consciousness’
of the participants.[lxiv]
They are able to acknowledge by comparison the extent to which their expression
is limited and conditioned by the operation of the system which the portfolio
works in conjunction with. We see then an example of what Hal Foster describes
as a subcultural practice ‘Neither in nor out of the social text’ yet
‘symptomatically expressing its limits and aporias’.[lxv]

And with that said we are able to
return to the image of The Moving Times. As we saw the enactment of this
‘poster perversion’ on the underground did not take the form of the defacement
of existing posters or a graffiti campaign but was instead manifested as a
document submitted through appropriate advertising channels. Trocchi
established an intimate connection with the very structure which was the target
of his subversion. For Trocchi then it appears that Project Sigma was not an
attempt to cultivate an outsider position but perhaps instead questions the
idea of there being a division between inside and outside, culture and
counterculture. Rather than creating difference it promoted in relation to the
mainstream, as Foster notes, ‘disturbance, doubt’.[lxvi]
Trocchi may not have succeeded in realising the extent of his ambitions (such
as the use of found material artefacts as capital in order to buy an island),
but what I hoped to have suggested in this paper is that the portfolio itself
generated and instigated this desired for ambivalence.[lxvii]
It was instrumental in establishing an active, correspondence between the major
intellectuals of the sixties and in doing so also created what I regard as a
highly sophisticate platform for cultural critique. As one final point, it is also
worth noting that Sigma’s metacategorical resonance persists to this day as the
portfolio continues to pose a problem for archivists. Trocchi is neither the
author nor the editor of the collection, the documents themselves form neither
a book nor a magazine and there is also confusion as to whether the appearance
of the articles in the portfolio designates them as being published or
unpublished. Subsequently, 50 years
after its instigation, Project Sigma in the shape of the Sigma Portfolio
continues to generate a significant institutional disturbance. This to me at
least constitutes a major achievement.

Notes

[i] Trocchi
referred to himself as a ‘cosmonaut of inner space’ during the 1962 Edinburgh
Writer’s Conference organised by John Calder and the phrase was subsequently
used widely by kindred spirit and fellow conference delegate, William
Burroughs.

[iii]
Trocchi, ‘Sigma: A Tactical Blueprint’ in The Invisible Insurrection of a
Million Minds: A Trocchi Reader edited by Andrew Murray Scott (Edinburgh:
Polygon, 1991), p.195. The essay was originally written in 1962, along with
Sigma’s other primary statement, ‘The Invisible Insurrection of a Million
Minds’. Both essays were originally published in the periodical New Saltire
Review before being extensively reprinted, as Murray Scott reports, in
publications such as International SituationisteReview, Anarchy,
Los Angeles Free Press, Evergreen Review and City Lights
Review (pp.227-8).

[iv] In his
cover letter sent out to numerous individuals to accompany the Sigma document,
‘Potlatch’, Trocchi speaks of his intention to post The Moving Times ‘in
underground stations, in coffee houses, art galleries, bookshops, wherever it
can conveniently be exposed’ (London: Sigma, 1964.). Due to the ephemeral
nature of the publication it is difficult to gain a sense of the actual scale
of Trocchi’s distribution. However certain details are suggestive. In a letter
sent to Lawrence Ferlinghetti dated 7th August 1964, Trocchi refers
to the work of one ‘Sankey’ who was said to be ‘printing our first formal job: The
Moving Times, a double crown poster to go up in subways, cafes and
wherever’. This is likely to have been John
Sankey of Villiers Press. A letter dated October 1st, 1964
again to Ferlinghetti updates him with the news that ‘Sigma is jumping’ and
Trocchi states that he is ‘concerned with SF distribution of The Moving
Times’ (unpublished letter part of the City Lights Archive, Bancroft
Library, University of California). According to A Descriptive Catalogue of
The William S. Burroughs Archive copies of The Moving Times were
sent to and received by Burroughs (London: Am Here Books, 1973), p.342. It is
safe to assume that the poster was also received by the other contributors and
those identified in the Sigma document “List of Interested Persons’. Given this
extensive, often transatlantic postal distribution it is entirely possible that
the poster would have been distributed by Trocchi and his Sigma associates,
Jeff Nuttall and Marcus Field to key countercultural centres in London such as the Indica Bookshop and Gallery, The
Roundhouse, The Arts Lab and the ICA.
I have found no specific evidence to prove that Trocchi succeeded in renting
poster space on the Underground but this does not rule out the possibility of
the poster being hand distributed on underground trains.

[xvi] Trocchi’s
connection is referenced in several biographical accounts. See Andrew Murray
Scott Alexander Trocchi: The Making of the Monster (Edinburgh: Polygon,
1991), p.76 and Bowd, pp.5-10. A clear indication of Trocchi’s status amongst
the Situationists can be seen in the 1960 document ‘Hands off Alexander
Trocchi’ by Guy Debord, Jacqueline de Jong and Asger Jorn. Written in response
to his incarceration on drugs offences in New York, it identifies Trocchi as a ‘new
type of artist, the pioneer of a new culture’. In Campbell and Neil, pp.
129-130.

[xvii] Greil
Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), p.377.

[xxvi] A
course list for the proposed Anti-University appeared in International Times,
number 24, January 19th-Febuary 1st, 1968 highlighting
concerns similar to those of Sigma. Courses were advertised in ‘Underground
Communications Theory, Incitement of the Underground, and The Sociology of
Guerrilla Warfare’ (London: Lovebooks, 1968), p.3. A brief account appears in Jonathon Green, Days
in the Life: Voices from the English Underground 1961-1971 (London:
Minerva, 1988), pp.238-9. Joseph Berke, the institution’s founder, provides the
most comprehensive survey and analysis in Counterculture (London: Fire
Books, 1969). Roberta Elezy’s essay within this volume ‘The Anti-University’
alludes to Trocchi’s work as if the ideas of ‘The Invisible Insurrection…’ are
indistinguishable to the thinking behind the Anti-University, pp. 230-262. An
interesting comparison can be found in Howard Slater and Jakob Jakobson’s essay
‘To Transfigure: To Organise’ (London:
Break/Flow, 2002) available online at www.copenhagenfreeuniversity.dk/trans.html.
Barry Miles provided a succinct summary of the chaotic nature of the enterprise
during a personal interview, London,
6th December 2006. He stated that many of the courses advertised in International
Times came to nothing. The close connection between Sigma and the
counterculture as a whole was also illustrated in this interview with Miles
describing how Trocchi used office space within the Indica Bookshop and
Gallery.

[xxviii]
Vikenoog describes these achievements in his essay ‘A Rap on the High Road to
Happiness’ in Berke, pp.146-168. In addition to the Sigma Centre which acted as
a performance and workshop space, Vikenoog also organised a mass poetry reading
in Amsterdam’s
Carre Theatre in February 1966. 26 poets performed to an audience of 2000.
Vikenoog states that this happening was linked to ‘Trocchi’s sigmatic ideas’
(p.159). It is of interest to note that the Free University of Copenhagen still
use Trocchi’s Sigma essays as integral part of its operating philosophy.

[xlvi]
Trocchi moved from Paris to New York in 1956. He then moved onto Venice beach. His
experiences in New York working on the Hudson River provided the basis for Cain’s Book,
published by Grove Press in 1960. Berman however, was the first to publish
material from the novel in Semina number 2, December 1957. Trocchi would
later flee America
due to drug charges. Information pertaining to Berman can be found in Michael
Duncan (ed.) Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle (USA: university
of California Press,
2006).

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